Restoration Happens Here

Rather than being stagnant, Sarabeth’s birth at the end of 2015 pushed me to grow and change. Once I had a child, I knew I could no longer fight God. I had to surrender the hurt and pain that I was feeling. And I had to welcome in his healing.

To be honest, it would have been easier for me to have given up. To have allowed myself to stay where I was. Hurting. Broken. Questioning everything.

Instead, now I am learning to push through the pain. I’ve found resources that help me through the struggle. I’ve found myself craving community. I’ve learned how to understand myself better.

And I’ve found healing.

But the road here wasn’t easy.

I can still remember the day in January 2014 when a friend at church suggested I seek out therapy and medication. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do either, I just had never considered it necessary to me. I had convinced myself that my new normal was fine.

But when others started recognizing it too, I had to admit I wasn’t fine anymore. I was broken in a million ways and I wasn’t sure how to begin putting the pieces back together.

I needed help in order to have the pieces get brought back together. So for a time, I took medication and I met with a counselor. And that was the beginning of the journey of healing for me.

What this step in the road taught me is that we have to take the next right step. It’s not always easy figuring what that step is. But when we’re given a direction, it’s often best to take steps forward rather than sitting still.

I can’t help but stop and wonder, where are you on your journey towards finding wholeness?

Are you fighting on your own, struggling to put one foot in front of the other?

Are you actively walking towards healing?

Do you feel lost in the emotions and chaos from the hurt and pain you’ve experienced in life?

There really is no wrong answer here. There’s no one path towards healing. I just know that there is only one healer. And you must spend your time focused on seeking God in order to seek the healing that you need on this journey.

The Place I Started

So, for me, therapy was the place I started. Medication gave me a little bit of help until we discovered our surprise pregnancy. I began to relearn how to think about things. To examine things from all sides. And as I learned to change my thoughts, restoration began to happen.

One thing I’m more convinced of the more I read and learn is that we are all subjective to what many affectionally refer to as “stinking thinking.” And the only way to combat those thought patterns is to dig deep into scripture. To ask for help from God (and sometimes our friends too) to point us towards scripture that brings truth to our current situation.

The second thing that I did to keep moving forward on this journey is journaling. In order to be honest and real with God, I needed a place to process my thoughts and emotions. For me, that is my journal. I have been an avid writer in my journal since I was a sophomore in high school. No matter what I’ve gone through in my life, my journals have remained. Recently, I counted. In 15 years, I have filled 53 journals. What that tells me, is that words bring healing. Words bring restoration.

So I started to write. And I started to read. I’ve always preferred to read non-fiction books, so I began to question what I felt I was struggling with most in my Christian walk. For me, that biggest struggle was prayer. Prayer was the first thing to go after my cousin died because it felt like I wasn’t being listened to. So I picked up a book on prayer and started reading. And I started journaling about what I was learning. And I started practicing what I was reading.

This Isn’t a Journey You Can Fail

There are many days where I have failed on this journey towards healing.

I wasn’t as restored as I wanted to be. I hadn’t “arrived.” And I didn’t even know what “arriving” was. But I felt I didn’t make it. But restoration doesn’t come by giving up when I feel like I failed.

Restoration happened when I let myself experience the struggle. When I embraced the tension between what was and what I knew could be. Restoration happened when I stopped comparing myself to everyone else around me. Restoration happened when I realized that some change (like subjective change) has no ending and it will always be a process. Restoration happened when I acknowledged that there were some things that I will always be working on throughout my life.

Restoration happened when I embraced the journey and the process rather than only looking at the end results.

Missed part of the 2017 Write 31 Days Series, Be Made Whole? Catch up here!